Re-open flawed salt murder case

The Nueces County DA should correct an admitted injustice.

Published 8:46 pm, Thursday, May 12, 2011

Few crimes inspire more outrage than crimes against children. Among those crimes, child murders provoke a societal reaction that demands swift and severe justice.

Such was the case in the trial of Hannah Overton, accused of the 2006 murder of her 4-year-old foster son Andrew Burd. In 2007, a jury in Corpus Christi found Overton guilty of capital murder. She is serving a mandatory life sentence without parole.

But as San Antonio Express-News staff writer John MacCormack has reported, the case against Overton was deeply flawed. Even former Nueces County District Attorney Anna Jimenez, who as a prosecutor helped argue the case against Overton, now concedes that her conviction was “an injustice.”

Overton, a mother of five who worked in Mexican orphanages, hardly fits the profile of a child killer. Andrew was born to an alcohol- and drug-using teenage mother who lost custody of the child. Among his many developmental and health problems, Andrew suffered from an eating disorder — possibly a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome that causes an uncontrollable appetite.

That's an essential point in this case, because the bizarre allegation against Overton — for which she is now sentenced to spend life behind bars — is that she poisoned Andrew by forcing him to ingest a lethal amount of salt. But Overton's new attorney, Cynthia Orr of San Antonio, contends the prosecution withheld critical evidence about Andrew's medical history as well as medical evidence that erodes the case for intentional poising.

The 13th Court of Appeals and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals have denied appeals in the case. But those appeals were made before the full prosecution file was made available to Orr and before Jimenez acknowledged ethical and procedural lapses by the lead prosecutor in the case that could have been favorable to Overton's defense.

Despite Jimenez's acknowledgment of an injustice, the current Nueces County District Attorney, Mark Skurka, is still arguing in court against re-opening the case.

Skurka should follow the example of Washington-Burleson County District Attorney Bill Parham, who last year filed a motion to dismiss charges against Anthony Graves in a murder case riddled with prosecutorial misconduct. “There is nothing that connects Anthony Graves to this crime,” Parham told the Houston Chronicle. Graves was released in October after serving 18 years in prison.

Not only is there nothing to connect Overton to the crime, there's also good reason to believe there may not have even been a crime.

Andrew Burd's death was tragic, but there's ample reason to question whether he was murdered and even more reason to doubt that his foster mother killed him by forcing him to eat a deadly amount of salt. The Court of Criminal Appeals should move swiftly to rehear the case against Overton. To correct an acknowledged injustice, the Nueces County district attorney should support reopening the case.